A Ghost Between Us
by Alory Shannon
Summary: Those who have always been sure of themselves find it the hardest to admit and deal with the fact that they are not always the best fit for certain jobs, certain situations…and certain people. Oneshot, futurefic.


Yamanaka Ino is not really used to working in the hospital. She doesn't like it, doesn't like the too-clean antiseptic smell, the flat would-be-cheery decor, the way everyone always seems to either be in a bustling life-or-death hurry or else bored and sedentary enough to have moss growing on them. Most of all, she doesn't like the hollow-eyed and hopeless patients tucked away in each room, like eggs in a carton, just waiting to crack or spoil.

She doesn't like the memories it brings back either, or the way she keeps expecting a certain face to appear around every corner when she knows--_she knows_--it never will.

But she has little choice: times are hard, and though she's not a top-level medic-nin _(not nearly as good as Sakura had been,_ is the automatic response that always follows that train of thought, which is in turn followed by a wash of loneliness, bitterness, and unfocused anger), she's still better than nothing, or so she tells herself, repeating it like a mantra, clinging to it like a lifeline. The words are starting to lose their power though, growing a little weaker each time she realises she's faced with an injury she can't heal or the knowledge that a patient is going to die simply because she just didn't have enough talent, enough potential, because she hadn't studied hard enough, trained long enough, because she is Yamanaka Ino instead of Haruno Sakura.

She wonders why they still bother having her come in, why they keep assigning her more patients to kill or to watch die, why they won't just leave her alone and let her focus on following in her father's footsteps and do her work for I & I. (She's _good_ at that, better than Sakura ever could have been, though she hates herself a little every time she catches herself thinking anything along those lines because it's such a trivial victory and she knows she'd give every scrap of that talent to be a better medic-nin, or if it would mean bringing Sakura back, even if it meant she'd be relegated to second place in _everything_ for the rest of her life.)

Everyone loses patients, everyone makes a bad call every now and then, everyone forgets something or messes up. She knows this, but knowing something and dealing with the reality of what that knowledge really means are two vastly different things.

It's bad enough when it's a complete stranger; but when the person lying on the table or in the bed, coating her hands with the vibrantly wet colour of their blood, when it's someone she _knows,_ someone she has legitimate, personal reasons for wanting to save, then it's countless times worse, and her hands tremble each time, even if the problem is nothing life-threatening. They'd tremble even if she were just removing a splinter or cleaning a scraped knee, though the real shaking doesn't begin until she's out of the operating room, out of the hospital altogether; it's once she's at home, alone in her tiny apartment, that the shudders wrack their way through her, and nothing she does can stop them, though that never stops her from trying which usually means she finds herself curled up in a corner of her shower, arms locked tight around her legs, face pressing into her knees, hot water streaming down to soak her oftentimes still-fully-clothed body. Sometimes she finds that she's dragged a blanket in there with her—once she'd pulled the comforter, blanket, and sheet off her bed and taken them all, another time it was both of her couch's tatty throw pillows—but most of the time it's just her, and regardless of what she has or hasn't brought into the shower with her, she stays under the pounding jets until the water goes icy cold and she doesn't know anymore if she's shivering from nerves or just from the cold. That's usually when she stumbles out of the bathroom, though every so often Shikamaru has to come over and come in after her and carry her out, and for a few days no one from the hospital contacts her, though they always do eventually, just when she's almost convinced herself that she's free of it, that they've finally realised that she's not cut out for that sort of work and won't force her back into those too-clean hallways and too-quiet rooms.

* * *

It's something of a relief that it isn't her fault when Kakashi dies, though a part of her will always wonder if maybe, _maybe,_ if she had been there that day and if she had been assigned that surgery, she might have pulled off a miracle for once and saved him somehow. She shouldn't be able to blame herself this time, yet somehow she still does, at least partially, and that just makes her hate working in the hospital all the more.

She's surprised, though perhaps she shouldn't be, when she sees _that_ name on her list of patients.

She's even more surprised when she steps into his room. It's only been a week since Kakashi's funeral, but the last living member of Team Seven is already so agonizingly thin that even the loosely fitting hospital gown can't hide the painful protuberance of his shoulder blades, the jagged outjut of his hipbones, the arching curves of the ribs in his chest where they intersect with his sternum. Always pale, he now looks even more washed out than the bleached sheets beneath him, ghostly and half-translucent; the only colour amidst the shades of grey in his face are the deep circles ringing his eyes, crescent-shaped purple-blue bruises that only emphasize how sunken his cheeks are and how darkly the shadows lie in all the jagged new angles that have engraved themselves in him.

Sasuke doesn't look up when she enters the room; not until she's standing by the side of his bed does he turn his head towards her, though his eyes are so flat and empty she feels more like he's looking through her, and she has to wonder not only if he recognises her, but if he even sees her at all.

Standing this close, she can see that there are fresh scars on his arms--not quite on his wrists, but close enough to be worrisome, and she looks his chart over yet again, holding it too close to her face so she doesn't have to keep seeing all those terrible little white-on-white lines marring his skin. _It could've been an accident,_ she thinks, but she's not stupid and she's seen more than enough injuries exactly like this to know she's lying to herself, because the cuts are far too straight to be anything but purposeful.

She wants to be shocked and horrified at his breakdown, but she's seen similar cases far too often in recent years, and in any case she understands it all too well. She'd lost her sensei too, though that pain has faded with the years, which is why part of her knows she doesn't really understand how he feels at all, why she can never understand. She can't even bring herself to imagine losing her whole team _and_ her best friend within the space of a few months.

Still, the haunted look that had passed between them for the fraction of an instant their eyes had truly met had shaken her, because ever since Chouji, and especially ever since Sakura, she's felt exactly how he looks. She's just better at hiding it, because that's what she's always done, breaking down a little every so often but then walling it away and building over it, and while that balance has become precarious at best and the breakdowns happen more often lately and take more and more time to get over, she knows there's nothing to do but keep going. She's too stubborn to give up, too stubborn to let Sakura win at this too.

But really, she thinks, there is very little she can do for Sasuke. Shizune must have assigned him to her knowing that they had been classmates once (forever ago, countless centuries past, back when things like war and death still hadn't really touched her personally, a whole different lifetime), but any bonds they'd once had have faded--too delicate to have been broken, it was more like they had melted away, sugar leaving a bitter aftertaste on the tongue, snow dwindling down into nondescript grey puddles that vanish without a trace a few hours later. The only common ground they still share is Sakura, and that common ground has been buried in the graveyard for months now, so all they really have is mutual grief and a matching sense of loss, and more than a few regrets. She has no words for him, nothing that would mean anything to either of them any more, so she checks his medication, his chart, the machinery, and then leaves, never breaking the silence.

Of course, that still doesn't prevent Ino from blaming herself when he keeps getting worse—she _should have_ said something, _should have_ forced him to move, or look at her, or say something, anything, anything at all to keep him engaged and _living,_ painful as it might be. But all those _should haves_ pale and wane and evaporate whenever he's right in front of her, and so they share that common ground of silence (silent as a graveyard) as well.

There are more ways to speak to someone than with words, she eventually reminds herself, and not all languages are spoken aloud, and after just a few days, she can't stand how plain, how bland, how colourlessly silent that room is; it can't be good for him, keeping him somewhere like that. He _needs_ colour, he needs some sign that life has gone on and some proof that beauty still exists, not stark off-white plaster walls and ugly stained grey tile floors, so she decides to start bringing him flowers.

_The last time you brought flowers to someone who was in the hospital, you weren't alone. _

She can't stop that thought and others like it from dancing through her mind, and this time she doesn't even try. She's given up on a lot of things lately, and getting over or at least trying to forget or ignore the void Sakura has left inside of her life is one of them. She will never stop missing her, she knows that now. There's too much of Sakura still inside her head and her heart for her to ever stop; so when she brings her own flowers (half a dozen pink roses), she brings one for Sakura too (a single yellow narcissus).

Somehow, she thinks as she sets both vases on Sasuke's bedside table, that lonely daffodil still manages to overshadow those roses.

Somehow, she isn't surprised by this in the least.

* * *

She's just a few more charts away from finally getting to go home for the night when a very young-looking nurse comes skidding into the tiny makeshift office Ino shares with a few of the other part-time medic-nin. Ino can hardly understand what the girl's saying, she's babbling so, but she hears the words _Uchiha Sasuke_ and _seizure_ somewhere in there, and before the girl can catch her breath or even finish giving her mangled report, Ino nearly knocks her on her ass on her way out the door.

It's not a seizure, not really, Ino finds with relief, though it's far too close to catatonic excitement for her liking; she gives him a muscle relaxant, then closes the door in the face of the wide-eyed nurse before going back to Sasuke's bedside to look him over.

He's managed to rip out both his IVs, and has scored a few deep scratches into his arms with the fork from the untouched dinner tray at his bedside, and Ino sighs as she sets to work healing him. She'll give him a sedative too once she's done, and hopefully he'll sleep whatever this is off, but right now, she wants him to hear the words she's finally found it in her to say.

"They would hate to see you like this, you know." She looks him hard in the face, a little taken aback at just how angry she is at him right now. _"I_ hate seeing you like this, and I hardly even know you anymore, so I can't imagine what they'd think." She probes one of his cuts, perhaps a little harder than necessary, and plows onward. "They both died to save you--it wasn't your fault that it happened that way, but that's still how it was, and you know it--and if you think for one second that I'm going to let Sakura's death mean _nothing—"_

The blonde jerks her head to one side, pressing her lips together firmly; yelling at him won't do anyone any good, and she had been getting dangerously close to doing so.

"You're not the only one who misses them…or who blames yourself for letting them die," she murmurs after giving herself a moment to calm down, her hands resting on his newly-healed arms comfortingly, though who she's actually trying to comfort, him or herself, she isn't sure.

The muscles in his jaw clench, or maybe it's just her imagination, or just a side-effect of the muscle relaxant, but either way Sasuke doesn't say a word, though he does make solid eye contact (only the second time he's done so since he'd been admitted), glaring at her, a silent _whatever you think you know about me, you can just forget it because you couldn't be more wrong,_ until the sedative takes effect and his eyes roll back and close.

Ino doesn't move from the chair beside his bed for long while, staring down at his still but still strained-looking face and wondering just what, if anything, Uchiha Sasuke means to her anymore.

* * *

She had thought he'd been catatonic before, but Ino realises just how wrong she was over the next week. Before, she (sometimes with the help of a nurse) had always been able to shift him in the bed to clean him, change his clothes, and prevent him from getting bedsores; now he might as well have been carved from granite for all the flexibility he exhibits, and only a dangerously high dose of muscle relaxants can do anything to alter this. No longer does he simply avoid eye contact; now he doesn't even seem fully aware, staring straight ahead at whatever (whoever) is in front of him without any sort of reaction, his consciousness retreating to some deep, hidden, unreachable place.

But Ino has to try. She's nothing if not stubborn, and so she has to try to talk him out of this.

It's dusk, the light still filtering through the partly closed blinds washing the room in a rich, honey-coloured glow, but to Ino, that warmth only makes the shadows seem that much darker. She's raised the head of the bed and propped Sasuke up on pillows so he's sitting up more or less, and she settles herself on the edge of the bed (unprofessional, but there's too much at stake here to worry about that, and the door is shut anyway and she's only part-time—what are they going to do, fire her?—and none of the regular medications are working so no one is likely to care what she tries).

She holds a photograph of the old Team Seven up in front of him, watching expectantly; she tries a picture of just Naruto, then just Sakura as well, and can almost convince herself that she saw a flicker, a slightly faster blink, some sort of response, but it's gone too fast to be sure, and it doesn't happen again when she moves the photo out of his line of sight and then back in.

With a sigh she starts to lower the picture again; she's startled enough to give a little squeak when Sasuke's hand suddenly lashes up and out, snatching the framed picture away and clutching it to himself. His eyes close briefly, but he doesn't try to look at it, or even seem to remember that he's holding it after a few minutes have passed; regardless, his grip on it is tight enough that she can't pry the wooden frame free without almost certainly breaking some of his fingers, so she lets him keep it for now, placing her hands on top of his and leaning forward enough to look straight into those dull, flatly black eyes.

"Sasuke…" She starts, then stops, grasping for the words and finding them much sooner than she'd expected. "I know I'm not Sakura, that I can never _be_ Sakura, and that I'll never take her place here at the hospital or in your life or anywhere…but…but I cried for you, too! When I found out you'd left…when I heard that you'd been made an international criminal and that you were kill-on-sight…when you came back..." Her hands slide down to tighten on his arm, fingers digging into his flesh hard enough that she'll find bruises there the next time she comes in to check him over, but right now she hardly even notices the way his bones creak a little in her grasp. "They're gone, and I know it's hard to accept that, but whatever you may think, you're not alone. There _are_ still people here who care for you…so please…!"

Sasuke doesn't give any indication that he's heard a single word she's said, but Ino isn't at all surprised, not really. She'd spent much of her childhood throwing herself at him, and he'd hardly taken a first, much less a second glance at her; there is no reason for that to change now.

_"…My fault…couldn't save them…again."_

The words sound rough and rusty (he hasn't spoken for over a month now), but Ino's so relieved to finally hear him speak that she could almost cry; she doesn't realise what this really is, not right away. But when he repeats himself once, twice, five times, without inflection or eye contact, _then_ she knows, and she could almost cry again, this time out of frustration.

But she doesn't. She feels too hollow, to dry for tears right now. Those will come later, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow night, maybe a week from now, but not until she's half-frozen herself in the shower and Shikamaru has had to come in after her again. Maybe this time she won't let him move her. Maybe this time, she'll end up just like Sasuke.

That thought alone is enough to send a lance of righteous, desperate anger tearing through her, and before she knows it, she's grabbed him by the front of his flimsy hospital gown and hauled him fully upright.

"Stop this! You can't do this! I told you already that I won't let you!" She shakes him hard with every word, but his eyes are no less glazed; she can't stand it, can't stand that pale, placid expression any more, and the heavy silence that had followed her words is shattered with a reverberating _smack!_ as she strikes him across the face with an open hand.

The hand print blossoms on his cheek, red as the fresh vase of roses she'd placed at his bedside earlier, but otherwise his face remains unchanged.

Ino gasps, rage and grief melding into a low sob of utter distress, and pulls back her hand to strike him again, again, again.

She's forgotten where she is, and even what she's doing when another hand closes around her wrist, gentle but incontestably firm, and she turns frantic but still painfully dry eyes behind her to see Shikamaru standing there. He's smoking in the middle of the hospital, and she should care but she doesn't and she tries to jerk her arm free but he won't let her go. She wavers, opens her mouth, purses her lips, asking a silent question; he gives a minute shake of his head and then releases her arm.

Swallowing hard, Ino turns back to Sasuke, his face reddened by her assault but otherwise unchanged, and she bites her lip as she presses her palms over his cheeks, soothing away the slapmarks.

_"…Couldn't save them,"_ he whispers, ragged and flat, and Ino squeezes her eyes tightly closed and hangs her head, nearly resting her forehead against his, releasing a long, shuddering breath before quickly dropping her hands and moving away, grabbing up the clipboard hanging on the end of his bed, knowing that she's lost him already, that she's failed him, Sakura, everyone.

_"…Again…"_

In the middle of updating his chart, Ino presses down on her pencil a little too hard, snapping the tip off the lead.

Shikamaru watches, silent and seemingly indifferent, as his former teammate finishes with the chart, the medication, the standard cursory inspections of the machinery, IVs, and patient position. He's not really one for public displays of affection, but they're ex-teammates, childhood friends, and the way he puts his arm around her shoulders once she's done is more practical than anything, and if he didn't he doubts Ino would be able to remember how to put one foot in front of the other. With his other hand, he takes a long drag on his cigarette, trying without success to forget just how empty her eyes look as he leads her out into the hallway, closing the door on the still numbly-muttering Sasuke, though he has to wonder which of them murmured those last two words that hang and twist in the air like cigarette smoke:

_"…My fault."_


End file.
